I do not follow everything that is written in the Bible. I consider myself Christian. I only do something is Jesus said to do it.
My own "personal religion" is very small compared to most other forms of Christianity. I don't have any beliefs of what heaven or hell is like, what god "looks like" (if he does "look like" something), or stuff like that.
My entire religion is just a large set of laws. A large set of "do's" and "do not's". If Jesus said do it, do it. If Jesus said do not do it, do not do it.
However, I know the Bible does not contain everything Jesus ever said. And of course, there are some problems in life that Jesus did not tell us how to solve (Like what do we do if someone has a gun and is about to shoot us?). Still, I look to the Bible to learn anything about Jesus and his teachings that I possibly can. Everything else is up to my own personal morality to try and figure out.
for example, Jesus was never asked the question "What do you do if a man is about to kill you?". Jesus probably would have said, "It is ok to kill a man only if it is a last resort to stop him from killing you. That is the basic form of self defense. You have a right to defend yourself".
But, alas, Jesus was never asked that question (thankfully so). So really, that is up to interpretation, in my religion anyway, for me to figure out if it is OK or NOT OK to kill in Self Defense as a last resort becuase Jesus never directly said so therefore "you should never, ever, kill someone" is not a clear-cut law in my religion.
However, on the other hand, Jesus was asked the question "What do you do if someone is beating you up" and Jesus said "Turn the other cheek". So I do follow his teachings on that.
From what I can see, Jesus is pretty much perfect in his teachings. Jesus never told any of his followers to kill (unlike Muhammad, the muslim prophet, I have read a lot of the holy book of Islam and Muhammad told people to kill non-believers for no reason).
Am I wrong to follow Jesus this way? Should I follow the entire bible? Should I follow religious authorities? From what I remember, old laws before Jesus said that a woman should be stoned to death for committing adultery, and Jesus said "no, do not stone her to death, thou amongst you who is without sin my cast the first stone". So old mosaic laws of stoning women to death and Jesus' law contradict eachother. Things like that is why I decided to follow only Jesus, and not the entire bible.
Am I wrong about this?